> minimum road width is often tied to service vehicles (specifically fire and garbage trucks); these could be overcome with some thought.
We have fire and garbage trucks in Europe too and we manage to build small scale streets in the suburbs and rural areas without compromising on emergency services. The key difference is we plan these streets for the expected amount of traffic which will be a couple cars per hour at the top and have regular intersections with other streets where, should there be the rare case that a vehicle comes up towards you, there is enough place to act as a bypass. Americans seem to plan all streets as if they would be used at capacity 24/7.
The main thing seems to be requirements to turn around - a normal street here is wide enough to park five fire trucks side by side. It’s way too wide for what we need.
To be fair the streets date from before the invention of the car, so maybe it’s something else.
We have fire and garbage trucks in Europe too and we manage to build small scale streets in the suburbs and rural areas without compromising on emergency services. The key difference is we plan these streets for the expected amount of traffic which will be a couple cars per hour at the top and have regular intersections with other streets where, should there be the rare case that a vehicle comes up towards you, there is enough place to act as a bypass. Americans seem to plan all streets as if they would be used at capacity 24/7.
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